


breathe (until our dying breath)

by cywscross



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Catatonic Stiles, Fae & Fairies, Gen, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06A, Pre-Slash, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Vampires, Wild Hunt, ghost riders
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 00:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/cywscross
Summary: Time passes differently between the two worlds.--Or the one where Peter gets out, and then helps get Stiles out, but he is far too late already.





	breathe (until our dying breath)

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wanted to get this out for Shipping With Stiles Week, but then I was like Stiles has very little active role in this chapter so it wouldn’t really fit the theme, not to mention I couldn’t finish it in time anyway, so then I was like I could post this in time for Steter Creators Appreciation Week just as a thing to celebrate all Steter writers with, but I _really_ couldn’t finish it in time for that either, so it got pushed back again until now. Problem is, the original plan was a road trip AU, which got scrapped like halfway down and turned into a dystopia AU which I totally did not plan for, and everything is just a mess. Like seriously, what the heck is up with the vampires gdi. I’ll have to figure that out. And I actually didn’t want to post this until I was finished the second chapter too but it’s been way too long since I posted anything Steter so I thought I’d toss out what I have for now.
> 
> Also also this fic is for the person who sent me a couple Steter prompts eons ago (okay, not eons, cuz I actually do have prompts from eons ago still gathering dust in my inbox that will probably never see the light of day, so this one’s actually more recent but it has been several months, and the Anon has probably forgotten), one of which was the obligatory (post-)season 6a Steter fic =D so here it is. I’ll probably write that monster!Stiles fic too since I really like that prompt, although it’ll definitely take me a while before I can get to it :)
> 
> One last reminder – I’m playing around with the ghost rider lore in Teen Wolf so some things won’t match up with canon (obviously).

 

Peter kept his promise, however unspoken it was when Stiles gave him his keys and looked at Peter like the boy could still – even now, even after all this time – dredge up some spark of trust in him.  Peter called him a fool, even as he knew that – if he survived – there’s no possible way he could leave Stiles in that godforsaken world alone.

And he did.  He survived, burned again, healed again, and no matter how much he sometimes – most of the time – wants to rip McCall’s spleen out and feed it to him, it’s also true that Scott _needs_ Stiles, needs the darkness to his light if he wants to continue with his heroics, wants to _survive_ his heroics, and if nothing else, Peter can trust that fact to ensure Scott would do everything he can to get Stiles back.  As for the others – Lydia’s almost as loyal as Stiles, when it comes to the small pool of people she’s accepted into her heart, Peter’s own daughter apparently literally can’t stay entirely human without her ex-boyfriend/human-mentor/anchor/brother/Alpha, and with those two leading the charge, Peter is doubly assured that nobody is going to give up on Stiles until they free him.

And they do.  They get him back, eventually.  But time passes differently between the two worlds, and Peter should’ve remembered that.  It was three months for him on this side, and yet sometimes, when he closes his eyes or sits for too long, he can still remember the blank fog that wiped away his thoughts and made his mind drift, even with his wolf acting as a buffer, and he remembers feeling as if decades had passed before he blinked and heard the hoof beats of the ghost riders’ mounts and suddenly there was Stiles only a few feet away, frozen and lost, about to be trampled, and Peter was moving before his reaction was a conscious decision in his mind.

Stiles pulled him back, anchored him, breathed awareness and life back into him, and even if the boy will never know it, Peter owes him a debt for that alone.

But time passes differently between here and there, and it was three months for Stiles too, three months to bring Stiles – along with a horde of empty time-displaced victims – back through the rift, but it is too late.

“Stiles!”  Scott is the first to exclaim, but Malia is the first to reach the boy, dropping to an excited crouch beside the figure half-sprawled on the ground.

“Stiles?”  Malia reaches out and touches his shoulder.  “You’re okay!  You’re back!”

Peter knows, even before any of them sees his face.  Lydia makes a strangled sound a few feet away.  Peter stands the farthest back, frozen.

Then Stiles turns to look at them, and nobody needs to say a word.  His expression is slack, and his eyes are as empty as all the other flesh-and-blood ghosts scattered around the clearing.

For a brief moment, Peter catches his eye, or at least their lines of sight cross.  There is no recognition in Stiles’ gaze, and the blankness behind it cuts through Peter like an accusation.

_Why didn’t you come back for me?  I helped you.  I trusted you.  Why didn’t you come back?_

Stiles’ eyes slide off him, not really seeing anything, blind to the world even as Malia makes a noise that’s half helpless fury, half despair.

Peter turns away.  His teeth itch.  His hands curl into fists, claws digging into the meat of his palms, a familiar rage settling in his chest like the smoke and ash he once choked on.

_Why didn’t you come back?_

 

* * *

 

Beacon Hills’ long-term care ward has never been busier.  The local law enforcement is working overtime, trying to figure out where all these brain-damaged people came from, and only the guilt-stricken sheriff knows what happened and _he_ certainly can’t say anything.  He’s still barely able to wrap his mind around the fact that he forgot he ever even had a son and conjured up his dead wife to replace him instead.  That, or perhaps he prefers that world where he had Claudia instead of Stiles.  Peter is cynical enough to believe it, and he’s known Stiles long enough to know that _Stiles_ believes it.  Believed.  Would believe if he wasn’t like… this.

Even before, Peter could tell that Stiles has never been the Sheriff’s ideal son – too smart, too curious, too different, too much for this town.  And family wants you to be what they want you to be, not what you want to be.  Peter knows that much from personal experience.  He’s had to put up with it his entire life, right up until they all died or fucked off to places unknown and left him behind.

God, he’s turned into a cynical old man.

Specialists are called in for the patients when no one on staff can find anything wrong with them aside from the fact that they just won’t or rarely respond to outside stimuli, and the FBI invades again when it’s clear that the investigation isn’t getting anywhere.

The victims mostly just sit and stare at nothing, or they sleep.  A handful start screaming out of the blue like they’re seeing horrors no one else can see, and eventually, they have to be sedated.  Some of them eat when prompted, like Stiles; the rest have to be hooked up to IVs, and even then, a dozen – the oldest perhaps, judging by the outdated styles of the clothes they were wearing when they were brought in – are dead within the first five hours, their cells decaying the way old age does to everyone, only a lot faster, as if it’s catching up to them all at once.  And not even modern medical equipment can halt the march of time.

Frankly, Peter doesn’t give a damn about any of them, doesn’t care about the police officers all scratching their collective heads over this mystery, certainly doesn’t care about Scott and his puppies, floundering now that their plan to get Stiles to come up with a plan to rid the world of the ghost riders once and for all has fallen through.

There’s been no talk of sending Peter back to Eichen House, which is good because Peter’s not in the mood to deal with the tedious complications that slaughtering a bunch of teenagers would bring.

Instead, Peter focuses on Stiles.  He meant to leave, actually.  After everyone else carted Stiles – and by extension the other victims – off to the hospital, Peter went back to the empty loft, paced a bit, even went so far as to track down the car he bought – somehow still parked on the curb instead of towed or broken into – with all his belongings still inside, and he could’ve left then.  Nobody was stopping him.  Nobody would’ve even noticed until he was long gone.  And he was on his way out of town anyway before the ghost riders nabbed him.  He likes to think he’s learned his lesson after the fire, after Laura, after biting Scott in the woods and being tortured in Eichen House and all the crap in-between – compared to that, being an omega without even a joke of a pack to fall back on doesn’t seem half so dangerous as staying in Beacon Hills would be.

Leaving would’ve been easy.  But…

They’ve given Stiles Peter’s old room.  Peter can’t decide whether to laugh or not, when he finds out.  He suspects the sound would’ve come out a little manic.  That room, that godforsaken room, is where people go to die, left alone to rot away in isolation so people can forget about you and move on with their lives without the burden of having to care for the family cripple.

So Peter’s a little bitter.  At this point in his life, after all the bullshit he’s endured, he thinks he’s entitled to at least that much.

He slips in at night, after visiting hours are over.  He knows Lydia and Malia spent the majority of the day with Stiles, and Peter wasn’t keen on any awkward silences or even blame bandied around so he stayed away until now.  The security is still a joke in this place so it isn’t difficult to make his way to Stiles’ room.

Stiles has been tucked into bed, although his eyes are still open, and he’s staring up at the ceiling without any sort of awareness to indicate that he’s actually seeing anything.  Peter glances distastefully around the impersonal bare room before taking a seat in one of the plastic seats beside the bed.

Stiles is silent.  That’s what strikes Peter hardest.  After the nogitsune, Stiles was already more contained in his gestures, less energetic in his actions, but there was still something about him that took up _space_ , a presence that refused to be ignored.  And even in the train station when it was just Stiles and Peter and a crowd of pseudo-zombies, Stiles was still so… _bright_ , to Peter’s senses, the lighthouse on a foggy night; damaged and tired, whittled down by life, but still so _alive_.

He isn’t any of that now.  Peter could never understand how Scott and the others didn’t immediately take notice whenever Stiles walked into a room, couldn’t understand how none of them snapped to attention when Stiles opened his mouth to speak, because Peter’s own senses were always automatically honed in on the boy.  Because Stiles has never been prey, and Peter has always known that.

But here and now, Stiles is silent, his scent muted, too still under starch white sheets, all of him snuffed out like a guttered candle.  If not for the heartbeat thumping sluggishly in his chest as if even that’s about to give out on him, Peter would think the boy already dead.

He hesitates, then reaches out, touching the back of Stiles’ hand – _cold_ – before carefully wrapping his own hand around those pale fingers.  He glances at Stiles’ face.  The boy’s features don’t even twitch.

He doesn’t even know what he’s doing here, not really.  Peter should be halfway out of the state, not sitting in the dark holding hands with a dying boy in an impromptu rendition of a scene straight out of a cliché tragedy.

But he doesn’t let go.  He tries taking some pain but Stiles isn’t in any.  Small mercies, he supposes.

The hours tick by.  Stiles’ eyes fall shut eventually, although Peter doesn’t know whether or not he’s actually asleep.  His heartbeat never changes.

There are too many patients for the night nurse to do much more than peek in once to do a cursory scan of the body in the bed and the heart monitor before moving on so she doesn’t spot Peter sitting off to the side.  Then again, from what Peter remembers, it isn’t as if the staff here did a particularly thorough job even without the overflow of people in the care ward.  Peter’s nurse certainly didn’t take much interest in him until she realized what he could give her, and then she seemed to find some twisted fascination in making Peter bleed when she bathed him just to see how fast he could heal, or withholding sustenance before signs of it became obvious, all while he was still mostly paralyzed and therefore unable to rip her throat out.

Dawn comes, and Peter’s still there.  He’s there when Melissa bustles in and almost gets a heart attack when she sees him.  She doesn’t speak to him, and she keeps a wary eye on him as he moves to a corner of the room to let her tend to Stiles, but she also doesn’t chase him out either.  She finishes by cranking up the back of Stiles’ bed and lingering long enough to smooth back his hair.  Stiles opens his eyes but doesn’t otherwise respond save for the continued rise and fall of his chest, faint and slow.  Melissa leaves, disappointed and worried, and Peter sits back down without a word.

Malia’s the first to arrive when the hospital opens for visitors.  Her hurried footsteps halt by the door when she catches sight of Peter, but when he doesn’t look back at her, attention remaining on Stiles instead, the werecoyote shuffles in, and after another moment of dithering and a crinkle of paper, Peter’s eyebrows rise when half a scone is stuck in his face.

Peter blinks.  Malia makes an impatient noise and shakes the scone a little, sprinkling crumbs all over his lap.  Peter rolls his eyes and takes it, which seems to satisfy Malia as she proceeds to circle around to the other side of the bed before plopping down in the only other empty chair in the room.

She crams a mouthful of her half of the scone into her mouth and chews like an animal.  It takes a near herculean effort to not remark on his daughter’s lack of table manners but Peter manages it.  He knows what it’s like to lose an anchor; the only reason Malia isn’t completely feral is because Stiles is technically not dead ( _yet_ ).

He starts on his unexpected breakfast instead.  His appetite’s not what it used to be – nutrients through a tube was hardly filling, hospital food was disgusting, and Eichen House didn’t care if you went a day or three without the crap _they_ called food – but the scone is fresh and still warm so it’s tolerable.

For a while, they sit in a relative silence that’s too wary to be companionable or even comfortable, but it’s also underscored by a resigned edge that feels like enough of a truce to keep any hostility at bay.  Malia is the first to speak, although – like Peter – she doesn’t lift her eyes from where they’ve been glued to Stiles since she sat down.

“Do you think he’ll get better?”

Peter pauses mid-bite, then finishes the swallow.  He meets Stiles’ vacant gaze.  He thinks about lying.  In the end, he thinks of the Nogitsune and settles for, “He’s pulled through worse odds.”  Debateable.

Malia turns a glare on him, mood shifting like the flip of a coin.  “That’s not an answer!”

Peter returns it with a flat stare of his own.  “I don’t _have_ an answer.”

Malia bristles.  “ _You_ got out fine.”

Peter smiles without real humour.  “I’m a werewolf.  That… helped.  Anchored me to reality a little longer, long enough for Stiles to get there and bring me back fully.  Stiles wasn’t so lucky.”

Malia’s eyes flash.  “Because you left him there.”

Peter rolls his eyes even as he keeps his claws from digging into the scone.  “Was I supposed to take him with me?  If you recall, sweetheart, I didn’t exactly come back _unscathed_.  But I heal.  There wouldn’t have been enough of Stiles left for you to recognize him.”

For a moment, Malia looks like she wants to continue arguing.  Then she deflates just as quickly and goes back to staring moodily at Stiles, like she could will him into getting better if she just wanted it enough.

If only.

Peter leans back in his seat and finishes off his scone.  Neither of them speaks for the rest of the morning.

Between them, Stiles sits, propped up, staring at nothing.

 

* * *

 

Peter leaves when Lydia arrives a few hours later.  Malia, he can tolerate, but he isn’t going to sit around and trade barbs with the resident banshee all damn day.  With Stiles, it would be fun.  With Lydia, he’s learned, it just feels tedious and annoying.  Maybe because the girl can’t actually insult him without contempt in her eyes even now, petty and vindictive on Stiles’ behalf as if she has any moral high ground when it comes to Stiles.  As if she didn’t spend _years_ ignoring him because she thought he wasn’t fit to lick the ground she walked on.

Peter knows she’s learned better now.  Knows they’re good friends now, with the potential to become more ( _once, before the ghost riders happened_ ).  But Peter honestly doesn’t give a fuck.  He’s never been the forgive and forget type, and say what you will about Peter, but at least he can genuinely claim that he has never once hurt Stiles, emotionally or mentally or physically.  He frightened him.  Pissed him off.  But he never harmed him.

He ignores the voice in his head that taunts, _until now_.

So he sweeps out of the room just as Lydia steps in, vacating the hospital entirely because if it weren’t for Stiles, Peter would’ve been perfectly happy to never step foot in this godforsaken hellhole of death and disease ever again.  Although, of course, nothing can beat Eichen House.

He spends the rest of the day in his once favourite coffee shop.  Well, it’s primarily a coffee shop but he’s actually only ever come here for their selection of teas.  The place is run by different people now, and the food they sell isn’t as good as he remembers it being, but they have spacious seating and plenty of windows, and that’s something he’s always liked.  He sits near the back in one corner, watching people come and go.  There’s a certain amount of wary nervousness hanging in the air like a guillotine’s blade, has been ever since Beacon Hills became front-page news across the States for its surplus of kidnapped victims.  Even people as astoundingly oblivious or prone to denial as the humans in this town have always been can’t ignore such bold headlines anymore, and here they are now, heads ducked, going about their business with a cautious sort of urgency, each afraid they might be next on the list of whoever was responsible for putting so many people in the hospital or the morgue.

Peter almost finds a twisted sort of satisfaction in it.  People didn’t used to be afraid when the Hales protected this town.  Sure, there was the occasional innocent supernatural-related death every few years, but for the most part, their reputation ensured most of the people who wanted to cause trouble gave this town a wide berth, and the Hale Pack took care of any other threats that dared stick their nose into Beacon Hills.  And if something did manage to slip through and harm someone under their protection, they certainly made sure the guilty party wouldn’t ever be able to hurt anyone else ever again.

Scott McCall has been alpha of this territory for… what, almost three years now?  Yet the boy already has so much innocent blood on his hands that he’s practically dripping in it.  It’s disgusting.  Peter doesn’t give a damn about most of the world’s population – he’s always been that way, he cares about what’s his and that’s it – but he has his own pride and it chafes something fierce when he looks around at his hometown, at the lands his ancestors have protected for centuries, a place that he and his family guarded so diligently, now reduced to a smoking disaster of a joke in the hands of a bumbling fool, and even after all this time, he can still taste that same helpless rage that made him challenge McCall for leadership.

The saddest fucking thing, he thinks, is how Scott doesn’t even know it.  Won’t acknowledge it.  He sees the little he’s accomplished and thinks he’s doing a grand job, as if escaping time and time again from the jaws of near-death while people die around him is _normal_ so long as the bad guy repents and Scott McCall comes out the hero, and he never even _notices_ all the mistakes he’s made along the way.  He grieves for those he loses – for _darling Allison_ – but it’s never _his fault_.  As if just because he didn’t kill someone directly means he doesn’t have to take responsibility when that someone goes on to kill someone else, or another someone dies because he let his enemy charity cases go free to try again.  As if justice is only right when he comes out the shining knight, but always wrong when all that’s left of it means reaping vengeance for the dead.

That’s not what it means to be alpha.  Even Talia would’ve agreed with him on this.  Being alpha means you’re responsible for everything that happens on your land, the good and the bad, and for all of your packmates and everything that happens to them, _the good and the bad_ , and if you fail, even if it’s not at your hands, then _it is still your fault_.  Sure, you’re stronger and faster and more durable than betas or omegas, but you also take responsibility, always.  You don’t get to use the excuse _I didn’t know_ – that’s why you appoint an enforcer and delegate, and Scott was even lucky enough to have one ready-made, if somewhat inexperienced, but – from what Valack told him when the guy wasn’t torturing him, and for someone stuck in a cell twenty-four/seven, that man was always disturbingly up-to-date and perfectly willing to narrate everything going on outside Eichen House like it was his favourite in-house entertainment, with Scott McCall playing the starring role in How Am I Going To Fuck Up Today – their resident True Alpha threw that out the window too, because apparently Scott would rather see his supposed best friend dead than accept that he killed someone out of self-defence.  You don’t even get to use the excuse _I wasn’t strong enough_ – that’s why you build a pack, one with pack members you can trust and respect and whom trust and respect you in return, so that you’re that much stronger together.

That’s the ideal Pack.  And the Hales weren’t perfect – Peter would be first in line to admit that – but they sure as hell were a lot closer to that than Scott and his misfit idiots have managed.

The weight of leadership is a heavy burden, one that Scott still hasn’t learned.  Perhaps it stems from the fact that even now, even in the thick of it, even with _lives depending on him_ , he still – on some degree – refuses to accept that he is a werewolf, no longer human, and that _it isn’t necessarily a bad thing_.  Choice defines the kind of person you are, not species.  And if there’s one thing Scott is, human or werewolf, it’s stuck in his ways, too convinced that his worldview is right to ever accept anyone else’s, to ever accept change.

It’s infuriating.

Peter’s ceramic mug creaks in his hands so he makes an effort to redirect his thoughts.  He told himself he was done with this town, that he would wash his hands of it the way Derek and Cora both have and get the hell out while he still could.  Of course, that plan didn’t exactly go the way he wanted; if he’s honest, none of his plans have gone the way they’re supposed to ever since the fire.  A victory here and there is nothing when you still lose in the end.  He couldn’t even kill Kate properly.  No, the bitch just had to come back to life as a werejaguar of all things, and she’s _still_ alive right now.  Peter would admire her tenacity if she wasn’t _Kate Argent_.

The sun is going down by the time he polishes off the last of his (third) cup of tea and a second scone.  He checks the time, deems it too early for visiting hours to be over, and goes for a walk instead.  He hasn’t slept at all, but he’s also something of an insomniac these days, worse now after his stint in Eichen House where he only slept when he absolutely couldn’t stay awake any longer.

Besides, it isn’t as if he has a bed to sleep in.  He’ll probably have to make do with the backseat of his car sooner or later.

He almost wants to laugh, although the sound would probably come out full of self-mockery.  Look at him – Peter Hale, the once left hand of the proud Hale Pack, feared by all for his ruthlessness and intellect, damn well respected too for his strength and his cunning, no matter how grudgingly that respect was given by some, and now reduced to sleeping out of a rundown Toyota on the side of a street.  Oh how far the mighty has fallen.

He finds himself wandering into the Preserve, to where their house used to stand.  The place is still a dump, more charred wood and rot than building.  Animals stay away, and the front lawn’s barely pushing up any grass.  He wonders why Derek didn’t just sell the land before he left.  It isn’t as if he’s particularly attached to it if he couldn’t even be bothered to have the house rebuilt or attempt to re-establish a Hale Pack here.  Whether it’s guilt or something else – Peter doesn’t know and doesn’t really care, although knowing his nephew, it’s probably guilt, and Peter just doesn’t have the patience for it anymore.    Guilt hasn’t taught Derek a damn thing – the idiot man-child still takes up with women who can’t wait to stab him in the back, still abandons his duties as a Hale at the drop of a hat, still leaves Pack behind, and frankly, Peter’s tired of it.

He’s tired of a lot of things these days.  Even now, staring at the plot of land that he grew up on, the forests he learned to shift and run and track and hunt in, the place he once loved and sometimes chafed under, he feels what little energy he has left these days drain out of him.  He can taste an old, stale grief at the back of his throat when he swallows, and the moan of the wind blowing through the empty clearing is suddenly too much like the muffled wails of children in a burning house for Peter to stand.

Abruptly, he can’t leave fast enough, and he’s back in the bustle of town before he realizes he’s halfway to the hospital. He was always going to go, if only to sit with Stiles through the night again, but he was planning on waiting until after all the visitors left.

Ah well.  It shouldn’t be too long now so he can just head over.  He hasn’t really done anything all day and yet all he wants to do is sit down again and make sure Stiles continues breathing through the next twelve hours.

It only takes about fifteen minutes of loitering down the street before a peek through a shop window tells him it’s past eight.  It’s as easy as it was yesterday to slip inside, past the front desk, and up to Stiles’ room.  He passes a dozen rooms along the way.  Several that were occupied just this morning are empty now, and somewhere out of sight, Peter hears a heart monitor flatline.

They’re all dying, one by one.

He reaches Stiles’ room.  The interior is dark, the only light comes from the hall, and for a heart-skipping moment, even though he can hear the single heartbeat inside, he thinks Stiles has died too and nobody bothered telling him.  But no, Stiles is still there, lying flat on the bed again.  This time, his eyes are closed, with only the slow rise and fall of his chest to indicate any activity in the corpse-like body.

Peter pulls up a chair and sits.  It’s hard to get comfortable in it but he tries anyway, propping his feet up at the end of the bed, settling in for the long haul.

No nurses come by.  An hour becomes two, two becomes three.  Midnight comes and goes, and Peter dozes restlessly through the early hours before daybreak.

He jerks awake sometime after five to the sound of three different heart monitors going off at almost the exact same time.  One of them is right next door but the other two are at least two hallways down.  That’s the problem with heightened senses – two hallways down might as well still be next door.

It’s instinct to check on Stiles, to make sure his heart’s still pumping, that he’s still breathing, still alive.  He’s startled to find the boy’s eyes open, and before he can stop himself, Peter’s on his feet and leaning forward into Stiles’ line of sight and blurting out with something far too close to hope ( _you’d think he would’ve lost all of that by now_ ), “Stiles?  Can you hear me?”

But of course, Stiles doesn’t, doesn’t even blink, and Peter slowly sits back down, more disappointed than he’d care to admit.

He wonders why it bothers him so much, whether Stiles survives this or not.  Then again, there was always something about Stiles that made Peter sit up and pay attention.  Made him want the boy on _his_ side, from the very beginning.

 _Potential_ , he thought at first, and then, later, after being set on fire again, after catching glimpses of that enticing darkness in Stiles’ eyes, after research sessions that showed just how quick Stiles’ mind was, after watching him claw his way back from the Nogitsune’s clutches, Peter thought, _already dangerous_ , and he admired him for it.

It’s painful seeing all that brilliance reduced to this empty shell in front of him.  Even more so when Peter finally admits – if only to himself – that it’s probably at least partially his fault.  He could’ve kicked McCall’s ass into gear faster, could’ve stayed in that other world even, with Stiles, and waited to be rescued.  That way, they could’ve kept each other sane.  Perhaps not forever, but even if it was just for a while, surely that would’ve been better than leaving Stiles behind on his own?

After all, Peter knows exactly what that’s like, and he’d _hated_ Laura and Derek for it, and then he goes and does the exact same thing.  Maybe it’s a Hale trait.  God knows he’d leave most people behind in a heartbeat if it meant saving his own skin – strangers, enemies, even allies.  But unlike Derek and Laura and even Cora, he’d never leave Pack – he burnt himself into a six-year coma because he wouldn’t leave them – and Stiles… Stiles was probably the closest thing he had to Pack by the time he was thrown into Eichen House.

None of that matters now.  None of that _helps_.

Peter waits for a few minutes longer, eyes on Stiles’ unnaturally still face.  Then he kicks up his feet again and settles back in his chair.  There are still a few hours before the hospital opens for visitors.  Peter might as well get a bit more rest.

 

* * *

 

It takes two weeks before Peter comes to a decision.  Two weeks’ worth of nights in Stiles’ hospital room, two weeks’ worth of days wandering the town or holing himself up in his car or the coffee shop.  Two weeks’ worth of tensing whenever he hears the clatter of hoof beats on the wind and the perpetual fog drifting through the streets, never lifting.

It’s not over.  Not by a long shot.  They freed the ghost riders’ victims, their energy source, the _food_ that has sustained their Hunt for hundreds of eons now.  It doesn’t matter that nobody’s actually been _saved_ , that not a single victim has shown any sign of improvement even if they haven’t yet died.  It’s the principle of the matter, an attack on their pride, and nobody offends the fae and gets away with it, doubly so when it’s the Unseelie Court they’ve insulted.

There is a war brewing, Peter thinks, _hears_ it in the furious whispers between the borders of worlds.  He’s been touched by the fae, and so he hears more clearly than most, but even those who don’t – the unaware, the oblivious, the stubbornly ignorant – can feel the snap of tension in the air.

Peter has no intention to be here for it.  He was always planning to leave.  Beacon Hills will feel the wrath of the Court first.  It doesn’t matter that only a select few were responsible for getting one over them, so to speak.  Everything Peter knows about the fae says that they hold nothing but contempt for any species not their own and would be more than happy to wipe them all out.  Strife and conflict is in their blood too; war is right up their alley.  All they ever needed was an excuse to tip the precarious illusion of peace between their worlds, and now they have one.

The kids probably don’t realize the hornets’ nest they’ve kicked up, as blunderingly lost in a quagmire of supernatural as always.  You’d think they would’ve learned by now.  Peter dearly wanted to bang his head against a wall a couple times when he heard Scott’s lovely plan of saving Stiles so that Stiles could save them.  Well, Stiles can’t save anyone now, can he?

And from the scents in the room, most of them haven’t even come by to visit.  Shifters in general tend to find hospitals repugnant because their sense of smell is so much more heightened.  Peter’s actually a little impressed with Malia’s persistence because that girl’s been by every day like clockwork, and judging by how much her scent has permeated the room, she stays for quite a few hours too, before and after school, when she bothers going to class at all.   Lydia as well, to a slightly lesser extent, but Lydia doesn’t have a shifter’s nose.

The others though – Scott’s probably been by two or three times with Kira, only at the beginning, and never for long.  The others, not at all.  The stale scent of alcohol is there too so the Sheriff’s stopped by as well, but it’s as faint as Scott’s.  Not that Peter’s very surprised.  Even before his mind replaced his son with his dead wife, the Sheriff was an alcoholic and a workaholic rolled up in issues no child should have to bear, and yet Stiles was forced to bear them anyway.  It wasn’t exactly hard for Peter to notice, especially since he always did like keeping a close eye on Stiles.  So the Sheriff throws himself into his work and drink the way he always has, and at this point, there’s certainly no shortage of the former.  The police are still at a loss over this case, and it’s a good enough excuse for anyone who might bother to ask why it isn’t the father sitting at his son’s bedside the most.  Add to that the fact that the man’s probably obsessing over the loss of his wife all over again and – again – forgetting he has a son that he’s supposed to be responsible for, and Stiles might as well already be dead.

On a different front, the doctors – local and otherwise – would probably have more success finding an instant cure for the common cold than a cure for their current top-priority patients.  The hospital’s lost another couple dozen people already.  Only a handful are left, and nobody knows how to fix them either.  A sense of doomed finality hangs in the air, and maybe it hasn’t yet been said but Peter knows defeat when he smells it.

He’s visiting Stiles again, and something like fear twists behind his ribcage when he looks at the boy and sees how thin he’s becoming.  He still doesn’t respond to outside stimuli.  He still doesn’t recognize anyone.  If Stiles is in there at all, then he’s buried deep, too deep for anyone to reach right now, and maybe that’s what pushes Peter into finally making up his mind.

Because he watches and he listens, to the nurses muttering amongst themselves, to every beeping monitor that flatlines without fail sooner or later, to every gurney that wheels out its designated corpse, and he thinks again, _this is where people go to die_.

And he looks at Stiles, at the measly three visitors he gets, at the half-hearted checkups the doctors give him, at the four blank walls and starch white sheets, and he thinks, _no_.

 

* * *

 

That night, Peter doesn’t go to the hospital right away.  Instead, he parks himself on the front steps of the Stilinski home, waiting for the Sheriff to get back.  It only takes until eleven before the cruiser pulls into the drive, and John Stilinski climbs out, still in uniform.

Peter has made no attempt to hide, and so the Sheriff is already staring at him when he shuts the car door.

“Hale,” The man greets tersely after a moment of awkward silence.  The memory of a gun drawn on Peter’s head for the crime of having someone else rape his mind, take his spiralling madness of that time, and carry them out herself, only to turn around and blame it all – _all of it, something he had no control over_ – on him, flashes briefly between them, and Peter has to suppress a sneer.  He has zero respect for this man.  If this is the pinnacle example of the force of justice that the people of Beacon Hills is supposed to depend on, then it’s no wonder the Hale fire case was so easily dismissed as an accident.  Peter looked into John Stilinski – already made Sheriff even before the Hale house went up in flames – when he was tracking down his family’s murderers; it was only because he found no evidence of any kind of communication connecting Kate to Stilinski that he allowed the man to live at all.

Still, it’s honestly shocking how different the father is from the son.  Stiles would’ve sniffed out something wrong in a heartbeat, and it wouldn’t have even mattered if everyone else declared the case closed.  Peter is certain the boy would’ve continued digging until he uncovered the truth, just as he kept digging into the supernatural until he taught himself enough to teach Scott, to stay a step ahead of his enemies, to stand on equal footing with all the various creatures around him.

Still, Stiles loves this man, or Peter wouldn’t bother.

“Sheriff,” Peter volleys back in clipped bland tones as he rises fluidly to his feet.  He doesn’t beat around the bush.  He’s wasted enough time waiting to catch the Sheriff alone for a word.  “I’m here about Stiles.”

He tries not to wrinkle his nose at the wave of whiskey-soaked, guilty sort of resignation that fans across the yard.  The Sheriff makes his way closer, wary but at least not going for his weapon.  Peter would hate to have to tear him a new one.  This is his only good coat after all, and blood would be hard to wash out of it.  “What about Stiles?”

“He’s not getting any better at the hospital,” Peter says bluntly.  “At this point, even the doctors are just waiting for him to die.”

Stilinski flinches.  “They told me he’s just catatonic.  He’s not- He isn’t getting any worse.  He might still pull through.”

 _And regular doctors are suddenly experts on the fae, are they?_   Peter rages internally, sudden and violent enough that it takes even him off-guard.  _When was the last time you even visited Stiles long enough to see how your son is doing for yourself?_

It reminds him, this situation here, too much of the way Laura and Derek abandoned him.  Visiting someone as damaged as Stiles is, as damaged as Peter used to be ( _and still is, isn’t he?_ ), _staying_ for that someone, can be painful.  Heartbreaking even, to see no recognition or even reaction to your presence when there should be.  But you’re supposed to do it anyway, even if it kills a little bit of you every time.  Because you’re supposed to care enough to brave it.  Because you’re supposed to care enough for it to hurt in the first place.

(Because love means sacrifice when it demands it, and if that’s not something you’re willing to pay, then you never loved them enough to begin with anyway.)

Peter makes an honest effort not to let any of what he feels show but something must leak through anyway because the Sheriff’s hand drops to his gun.  Fine then.  Peter’s lip curls into a sneer, and this time he doesn’t try to hide it.

“I think you’re smart enough to know that this isn’t over yet, Sheriff,” He continues abruptly.  “You stole the riders’ food supply; I doubt they’re very happy, and even a human like you has probably heard them.  The hoof beats.”  He pauses, studying the other man’s face, the way it drains of colour in the dim lighting.  “They’re coming, and they won’t stop until they’re satisfied.”

The Sheriff swallows, hand tightening around his gun.  “Scott-”

Peter scoffs derisively.  “ _Scott_.  If your hopes hinge on him, then I’d advise you to get your coffin picked out post haste.”

Stilinski’s eyes narrow.  “Scott and his friends have pulled through before, they’ve always beaten the odds-”

“They’ve survived by the skin of their teeth,” Peter snaps harshly.  “And sometimes, if the morgue is any indication, if _your son_ is any indication, not even that.  Do you think that’s _normal_ , Sheriff?  Fumbling in the dark every step of the way, the laughingstock of our world.  He’s shown nothing but incompetence from the very beginning, both as a werewolf and as a leader, and _still_ he has no inclination to _learn to be better_.”

The Sheriff flinches like the words are a physical blow.  “What do you suggest then?  That they just give up?”

“Yes,” Peter says flatly, and the Sheriff blinks, stunned.  “Because you are up against the fae, and you – Scott, his little band of idiots, Deaton, all of you – are so out of your depth it isn’t even funny.  It is long, _long_ past the time for any of you to be putting up a fight.  So you _give up_.  You take Stiles, take Scott and his darling mother even, take everyone you love, and you get out while you still can.”

Immediately, the Sheriff stiffens, and he even has the gall to bristle, indignant distaste pervading his scent.  “And leave everyone else to- what, face the consequences?  _Die?_ I understand your first reaction when faced with danger is to run away, Hale, but I can’t do that.  Even the kids wouldn’t do that.  _Scott_ wouldn’t, or Melissa, and I can’t just leave them.  Besides, I’m the Sheriff, I have a duty to this town, and even if I didn’t, as a human being, I can’t-”

“Oh spare me,” Peter snarls, and he has to curl his hands into fists in his coat pockets, because _how dare this man?_ Because when it counted, when it came to the people Peter loved, even if they never really loved him in return, he has never, not once, run away.  “Duty to this town?  What about your duty to Stiles?  Don’t you get it?  It’s simple.  Simple math.  You just ask yourself – is your job, your reputation, your morals, Scott and Melissa and the lives of everyone in this town, even your _own_ life here, is the culmination of everything you are, worth more or less to you than the life of your son?”

And once again, the Sheriff flinches, except he opens this mouth and then closes it again, and this time he doesn’t say anything.  The silence drags, on and on and on, and something in Peter’s chest burns with the desire to rend this whole damn world apart.

( _Because when given the option, neither Laura nor Derek chose him either.  Not Cora when she came back and immediately accepted the word of a brother she barely remembered and a bunch of kids she didn’t know, siding against Peter without even asking for his side of the story.  Not even Malia who never gave him a chance, even though all those lost years can be laid right at Talia’s feet._ )

Finally, he turns, shoes scraping pavement as he heads for the sidewalk.  He doesn’t look back, even when Stilinski calls out after him, voice twisted up with resentment, “Why do you even care?  Why are you _here?_   Nobody’s making you stay.”

Peter’s steps slow but don’t stop.  “…I pay my debts.  Stiles helped me out of that other dimension.  Now I’m returning the favour.”

 _Or trying to at least_ , he thinks, and the lack of surprise that accompanies it is an acrid thing on his tongue.

The Sheriff’s hands ball into fists at his side.  His expression is defiant for all the wrong reasons, and Peter wants to rip it off him just to see if _that_ would finally bleed the right priorities into him.  “Stiles would understand.  He’d understand why I have to stay.  _Stiles_ would stay.”

This time, Peter does turn back, pinning the Sheriff in place with eyes he knows are glowing a furious blue.  “Yes,” he agrees, because he does.  “Stiles would stay, not because of the town, or most of the people in it, or because he thinks it’s _the right thing to do_ , but because you and Scott would stay, and god knows the two of you are worth more to him than anything else in the world, so he’d stay, and he’d fight, and he’d make damn sure the fae would only get to you over his dead body.”

And then, because words have always been his deadliest weapon, he also bites out with vicious relish, “And yes, he would understand why _you’d_ stay.  I have a feeling that he’s always understood, always known that he’ll never be your first choice the way you’ve always been his, so he very much would understand your decision now.  And that is the true tragedy of it, Sheriff.  Because he shouldn’t have to.”

Stilinski flinches and blanches white, and Peter will have to take that victory, however hollow, because he knows he won’t get another out of this man.

He leaves, and this time, the Sheriff doesn’t call him back.

 

* * *

 

He tracks Malia to her father’s house.  The thought of that relation leaves a twinge of resentment in his chest, but at this point, it’s easy enough to ignore.  If asked why he’s doing this at all, even he isn’t sure what he’d say.  Obligation, perhaps.  Familial duty is something he is intimately acquainted with after all.  But also too, if there’s one person in Beacon Hills who’d drop everything for Stiles, it’s Malia.

The house is dark, the driveway empty, and when Peter hits the property line, a light flicks on upstairs, and Malia has the window open and her head out by the time Peter comes to a stop on the front lawn.

“Peter?”  She squints down at him, clearly wide awake.  She doesn’t even seem to have changed into any sleep clothes.  “What are you doing here?  Shouldn’t you be with Stiles?”

Never let it be said that there’s anything wrong with Malia’s senses.  She’s spent enough time in Stiles’ hospital room to be able to tell that that’s where Peter’s been spending his nights.

Just as with the Sheriff, Peter doesn’t waffle around.

“I’m leaving,” He says brusquely.  “You can stay, or you can come with me.  It’s your choice.  But you choose now.”

Malia blinks, clearly startled.  And then they both twitch a little when a gust of wind tears across the yard, carrying distant hoofbeats with it.  Peter shifts his weight a bit, his wolf snarling inside his head.  He still remembers that moment on the street when he realized he wasn’t alone, looking up and finding himself surrounded on all sides, riders coming from both ends, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight back.

He hates being helpless.

He’s been nothing but since the fire.

He takes a breath, then lets it out.  He looks up again to meet Malia’s gaze.  “Well?”

Malia’s lips purse.  “Are you taking Stiles?”

And despite the situation, Peter smirks, just a little.  “Of course.”

Malia narrows her eyes at him, intently suspicious, and for a moment, even though the colour is different and the face that frames them is more delicately angular, it’s still like looking into a mirror.  Then Peter blinks, and it’s just Malia again, chewing on her bottom lip in consideration.

In the end, it doesn’t take her more than a few seconds to make up her mind.  She nods once, decisively, and pulls back from the window.  “Give me five minutes.”

Something loosens in Peter’s shoulders.  He didn’t expect Malia to turn him down – she was too practical to ignore the fact that this town will be going to hell in a handbasket any day now, especially if she didn’t have to stay for Stiles any longer – but… he can’t quite say he expected her to agree either, at least not without demanding they call Scott and the other brats first and see what _they_ think.

But true to her word, five minutes later, Malia’s stashing a luggage case in the trunk before coming around to duck into the passenger seat.

“Seatbelt,” Peter reminds her when she eyes him expectantly.

Malia rolls her eyes but reaches for her seatbelt.  “You sound like Stiles.”

Peter is… not even going to comment on that.

“You were already packed?”  He asks instead.

Malia shrugs, fumbling with the buckle.  “I’ve been packed since we got Stiles back.  I’m not deaf.  I know the doctors are thinking about pulling the plug, especially since nobody else has survived, and it’s not like anybody’s gonna magically find a cure anytime soon.  So, I thought, if I needed to run with Stiles, it was better to be prepared to go.”

Peter watches her for a moment longer before starting the car and pulling away from the curb.  “…And your father?  Did you leave a note?”

Malia doesn’t reply right away, turning her head to stare out the window into the gloom of the night instead.  When she finally does speak, her voice is tight with a startling wealth of bitter frustration and a weariness that goes bone deep.  “Look, just because Scott thinks sticking me back with my… dad means we get our happily ever after family back, real life doesn’t work that way.  My dad’s never really been able to handle…” She waves a hand in front of her, gesturing to just about everything of herself.  “-this.  Me being a werecoyote.  Me being… not human enough.  Me not knowing enough human stuff, especially at the beginning.  I mean he’d wake me up for school or he’d reach for the same cereal box I was eating from, and I’d growl at him, and he tried to hide it but I could tell he was really freaked out about that.  He never even… I don’t think he really even wanted me back.  I mean, he didn’t want me _dead_ , but me coming back alive all of a sudden, after all this time, it meant digging up the past and that car accident that wasn’t actually a car accident and his wife and kid dying and just… everything.  So… I don’t know if you know but after the first few weeks, I pretty much moved in with Stiles.  I didn’t only start going over there after we started dating.  Even before that, I couldn’t… I couldn’t stay in my dad’s house anymore.  He has a girlfriend, you know?  Who liked coming over but not when there was some kid around.  So I went back to the woods, it wasn’t that bad, I could still keep all my stuff in the house, and I’d go back and pick up my books and whatever for school and stuff, except Stiles noticed somehow, and he offered to let me stay at his place, so I did.  Stiles didn’t care about the growling, said he was used to it, and the Sheriff wasn’t there like six days out of seven anyway – I mean he didn’t even notice I was over there until a month after we did start dating, and even then, I think he only thought I was over there in the afternoons for homework – and _my_ dad never mentioned it, so it’s not like we had to worry about any adults, so everything was fine.  I only started living here again after we broke up and things got awkward, and then the ghost riders happened and we forgot Stiles and…”

She finally stops rambling, and Peter has to wonder if that’s just her or if it’s something she picked up from Stiles.  It works to distract him from everything he’s just been told, from the revelation that it was apparently _not_ all happy families all the time in Malia’s life the way Peter thought.  Which, he concedes, is a bit of an oversight on his part.  But Malia never seemed particularly unhappy even when she was still fitting in, and Peter wasn’t sure how to be anything in her life at that point anyway when Talia had long since ensured that he would be nothing, and he was so occupied with _Kate_ at the time…

They sound like such flimsy excuses now.

He remembers, suddenly, all the times he swung by the loft and found Stiles patiently tutoring Malia in math, in geography, in physics, in English.  Never any of the others, only ever Stiles.  Once, he’d even come upon them while they were doing a mock presentation, with Malia standing and holding cue cards and looking nervous while Stiles smiled encouragingly at her from his seat.  Peter had found himself thinking that it was a pity she didn’t inherit his talent for public speaking because that’s a life skill and _Peter’s_ certainly never had a problem with it, but he’d found it amusing too, that even with all the danger in their lives, something as simple as speaking in front of a class would be a problem for her.

Looking back now, it doesn’t seem quite so amusing anymore, and he thinks he probably owes Stiles for this too.

“Besides,” Malia continues in brusquer tones.  “I don’t need to leave a note.  My dad left two weeks ago with his girlfriend.  He asked if I wanted to go ’cause this town was getting too dangerous, and he just got a promotion in some office across the country or something too, but I told him I couldn’t leave Stiles, and I’m eighteen now, so... yeah.  He let me keep the house, and he was already spending most of his time at his girlfriend’s place before they left so it’s not like there’s been that much of a change.  Stiles taught me how to use the microwave and cook some simple stuff so I don’t need anyone around to make me food anyway.  And there’s always deer.”  She frowns.  “Not lately though.  All the wildlife’s been scared off.”

Peter says nothing.  He doesn’t quite know what to say to comfort her – does she even want comfort? – and offering to rip Henry Tate’s throat out for her is probably not very appropriate in this situation.

So in the end, he stays silent, and Malia doesn’t seem to mind, leaning forward to peer out the windshield instead, eyes on the hospital lights up ahead.

“So how are we gonna do this?”

Peter pulls into a shadowed corner of the near-empty parking lot.  “I’ll get Stiles.  You come with me and be distraction if we need it.”

Malia shrugs and gets out of the car.  “Simple enough.”

And it is.  The hospital feels almost ghost-like in its silence.  After weeks of hosting so many patients, their absence is keenly felt.  This place has probably never seen such a high number of deaths within such a short time in all its years of existence.  There’s barely anyone around for the night shift so it’s a simple enough matter to stroll in, steal a wheelchair, and get Stiles situated in it, along with some clean sheets and a pillow, before strolling back out again through a side door.  They bump into one nurse, and she’s redirected easily enough when Malia sneaks off to topple a chair down a flight of stairs.

Then they’re out and back at the car.  Peter figures it doesn’t matter at this point whether or not they’re caught on camera.  Worst case scenario, the hospital will call the police, and the Sheriff will get word and probably guess what happened, but what’s he going to do?  Call a manhunt?  They won’t have time.  There’s no saving this town, or the people in it, and when (more) bodies start dropping, nobody’s going to care about one catatonic teenager whom they probably think is going to die within the month anyway.

Malia shakes out a few of the sheets across the backseat before Peter carefully manoeuvres Stiles inside.  He hasn’t opened his eyes since they retrieved him, and it’s impossible to tell whether he’s really asleep or not.  Either way, he doesn’t stir even after they’ve settled him in the car, Malia tucking the pillow under his head as Peter arranges the rest of the blankets around him.  The wheelchair is one of those foldable ones so Peter fits that into the trunk as well before he and Malia clamber back into the car.

“Now what?”  Malia asks, her gaze lingering over her shoulder.

“We leave,” Peter answers curtly, pulling out of the parking lot.  “And if this is the part where you tell me we can’t go without calling the rest of your brat brigade, let me remind you that I am perfectly willing and able to knock you out before you can even take out your phone, sweetheart.”

Malia shoots him a dirty look for that but she doesn’t put up even half as much of a fuss as Scott or even Derek would have.  Somewhere in there, she’s still the girl who has no use for dead weight when they aren’t Pack, and that, on top of her time as an animal, that’s definitely something she got from him.  Probably the Desert Wolf too, but Malia isn’t quite that sociopathic, and neither is Peter.  Still, when you come from blood like that, it’s actually _more_ impressive that she turned out with as much compassion as she has, even if it’s only reserved for a select few.

“We can’t leave without Lydia,” Malia persists doggedly.

Peter rolls his eyes.  “What did I just say?”

“Stiles will never forgive you if you leave her behind,” Malia points out.

Peter sneers.  “Stiles isn’t going to forgive me for leaving his father and Scott behind either.  One more on the list doesn’t make a single difference to me.  We’re not taking anyone else.  There’s no room in the car anyway.”

Malia grimaces but she’s smart enough to know he isn’t going to change his mind about this.  “…Fine.  Then can we, I dunno, send them a text or something?”

Peter sighs.  “Write it now, send it after we’re out of Beacon Hills.”

Malia’s whisked out her phone before he even finishes speaking.  Peter rolls his eyes again.  Maybe not so callous after all.  But then, it seems as if Stiles didn’t just teach her how to be human.  He taught her humanity too.

“If you want to give each of them a chance to decide for themselves what they want to do, send them each a text,” Peter says instead, speeding up as they hit the road leading out of town.  “If you only send one to Scott, I wouldn’t put it past him to… bend the truth.  For such a naïve fool, he’s surprisingly manipulative when he thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

He ignores the speculative sidelong glance Malia gives him.  If there’s one thing he hates above all else when it comes to Scott McCall, it’s how hypocritical he can be.  Peter hasn’t forgotten what the boy forced Derek to do when he went up against Gerard.  He hasn’t forgotten that Scott himself wanted to kill Peter too, only for Derek to get there first.  It was only chance and circumstance that ensured Scott ended up killing neither.  So the boy will trick others into killing for him, and he’ll want to kill someone himself for his own gain, and he’ll even trust killers like Deucalion and Theo, _Theo_ whom Peter’s heard more than his fair share of from Valack, all about how that little rat infiltrated and murdered his way through town and gained Scotty’s trust without breaking a sweat because their vaunted True Alpha would rather trust some stranger than his own self-proclaimed best friend and brother, and when everything goes to shit and people start dying, it’s still not Scott McCall’s fault because _he_ didn’t kill them with his own two hands, of course not, he’s the _good guy_.  But when others do it, when Peter kills to avenge his family, or when Stiles kills in _self-defence_ , Scott will sit on his high horse and judge them and condemn them and pretend he’s better than all of them.

The steering wheel creaks in Peter’s hands, and he draws a breath before loosening his grip.  No point thinking about it now.

“I didn’t like the way he made Stiles feel guilty for surviving,” Malia says abruptly, still tapping away at her phone.  “You know about Donovan, right?  Stiles says you usually know something about everything even when you shouldn’t.”

Peter has to preen a little at that, feeling himself calm down even further.  Malia rolls her eyes but the humour doesn’t quite surface all the way.  “Scott’s opinion meant a lot to Stiles.  I mean, he doesn’t really care about what most people think of him, but Scott was always different.  So when Scott didn’t approve, Stiles always felt like he’d done something wrong, even when he hadn’t.  But… after the Sheriff almost died, Stiles was so mad.  They only stopped fighting because they had to pull the pack back together to defeat Theo and the Dread Doctors but… I don’t know if Scott ever apologized for blaming Stiles for Donovan, or for trusting Theo, or for… anything.  After we got Mason back but before the ghost riders appeared, Stiles and Scott were talking again but…” She shakes her head.  “Scott acted like everything was fine again.  But Stiles… I don’t know.  I just know that anybody who hurts Stiles’ family doesn’t get off that easily.  Even Scott.”

Peter casts her a swift glance before turning his attention back on the road.

No.  No they wouldn’t.  In that, he and Stiles have always been kindred spirits.  Forgiveness isn’t in their nature, although – as even Malia has noticed – Scott was always the exception to the rule for Stiles.  Hell, if Talia had pulled even half the shit that Scott constantly dumped on Stiles on _Peter_ , Peter would’ve ripped her throat out ages ago.  At least Talia – for all that she never quite trusted him as much as she did the rest of the pack – still trusted him _enough_ to acknowledge the fact that an enforcer was necessary and that there was no one better than Peter to protect her back from all the unseen threats to their family.  At least she _listened_ when Peter offered his advice, even if she didn’t agree with him even half the time.  At least she never did him the discourtesy of trusting anyone outside the pack over him.  Trusted other pack members first, always, but never an _outsider_.

Of course, then Derek’s abysmal love life and even more abysmal decision-making skills resulted in a dead girlfriend because the idiot boy took Peter’s warning the _completely_ wrong way, which resulted in Talia ordering Peter to keep his nose out of Derek’s business, which resulted in Kate Argent burning their lives to the ground.

But.  C’est la fucking vie.

God, he’s turning into a crotchety old man.  He’s thirty-six years old.  Some days, he wakes up still feeling twenty-eight.  Other days, which happens more and more often, he feels like he’s turning a hundred and can barely find the motivation to get out of bed even when sleep eludes him.

They pass Beacon Hills’ borders just as the clock in the car ticks past one.  Nobody stops them, no horsemen leap out to catch them.

They have an entire town to feast on after all, before they move on to the rest of the world.

 

* * *

 

Mere days later in a motel room in a small town in North Dakota, Stiles is propped up in bed with Malia curled up beside him.  Peter sits in the armchair, and they watch the fall of Beacon Hills on live TV.  News helicopters circle the town as cameras follow man-shaped figures with grotesque faces pouring out of several portals cracked open between the fabrics of space, riding demon horses as they bear down on their prey.  The reporters babble about what they see, no idea what they’re actually seeing but unable to look away all the same, voices shaking with horrified fascination.  One copter gets low enough for the camera to capture one horseman’s whip snapping out to curl around a fleeing woman’s throat, yanking her right off her feet and – within seconds – draining her of life until the only thing left is a dried out husk that the rider carelessly tosses aside.  With each human they hunt down, they become more solid and less ghost-like, and they spread through town like a swarm of insects, revelling in the screams and confused terror of their quarry.

It doesn’t take long for the first of the horsemen to break away from the town.  Some follow.  Some stay behind to pick clean the bones of Beacon Hills.

Peter sits back in his chair and turns his gaze to the window.  On either side of their room, his ears pick up hushed exclamations of disbelief and denial from the other occupants of the motel.  He doesn’t need to see to know that panic is spreading like wildfire throughout the nation, and the rest of the world won’t be far behind.  Who knows – Beacon Hills isn’t the only place where the magic is thick and old enough for the fae to slip through easily enough.

He turns to look at the bed.  Malia’s gone pale, still watching the TV.  Stiles’ eyes are open but he’s staring at the wall.

Peter’s gaze sharpens.  No.  Not at the wall.

He stands and walks over to the maps he pinned on the wall earlier, marked with red as he tried to figure out the best place they can run to.  They need somewhere safe, somewhere where even the fae can’t get to them, and there aren’t a lot of places like that in the world, and even less that are owned by people who owe Peter a debt or two.

He takes them down now and smooths them down on the comforter in front of Stiles.

Malia frowns at him, finally tearing her attention away from the horror story unfolding on television.  “What are you doing?”

Peter ignores her, intent on Stiles instead.  There has always been something about this boy, even before the nogitsune got its claws in him, something more than human, something like power, untapped and raw.  Peter’s always been able to smell it on him; he’s never understood how nobody else seemed to.

And ever since they left Beacon Hills, away from that godforsaken hospital and the foggy miasma that was smothering the town, Stiles has been… well, nothing like _getting better_ , exactly.  He hasn’t spoken a word, hasn’t done anything he isn’t prompted to do by either Peter or Malia.  But once in a while, when they’re driving down an open road with the windows cracked open or they’re settling Stiles in yet another motel and sitting with him as they send for room service or just talking quietly around him, piled together in the same bed, something flickers in his eyes, a brief spark of awareness that comes and goes but already more life in him that what he was reduced to back in Beacon Hills.

It’s _something_ , at least.  Something like hope, that Stiles will recover, however slowly.  If nothing else, he’s outlived everyone else who was taken by the Hunt.  It’s something.

And now there might be something more.

“Stiles?”  Peter coaxes patiently.  “Did you notice something?”

Stiles doesn’t respond, but his eyes have dropped to the maps, pale hands limp on the covers beside them.  For a long minute, he barely even blinks, and Malia starts shifting restlessly beside him, mouth opening to say something, only to shut it again when Peter shoots her a quelling look.

Then they both jerk back as every map between them promptly burst into flames.  Malia automatically reaches for the closest one like she wants to bat out the fire but Peter catches her wrists and shoves her away.  The werecoyote reflexively growls, but then she catches sight of his face, and whatever she sees there makes her look away before tucking her hands behind her back instead.

Peter grits his teeth and bites back a snarl, focusing on schooling his features into something neutral instead as he turns back to the fire.

The sheets aren’t burning, is what he’s already realized, which is the only reason he hasn’t made a grab for Stiles as well.  Only the maps, and even then, nothing smells burnt.  The flames simply eat their way inward until all that’s left is a small circle on one map, and then, just as suddenly as they appeared, they wink out again, leaving only blackened edges and the flutter of paper.

Peter and Malia both lean in.  Malia squints.  “…Europe?”

Peter cocks his head in thought.  “No, not just Europe.  Italy.”  He glances at Stiles with a widening smirk.  “Underground Vatican to be exact.”

Malia frowns like she’s trying to recall all the geography lessons she slept through.  “Where’s Underground Vatican?”

“Under Vatican City in Rome, of course,” Peter tells her, tapping a finger against what’s left of the map.  He didn’t circle this one, mostly because he’d been looking for safety, not… _firepower_ , so to speak.  But Peter of all people should’ve remembered that sometimes safety _is_ firepower.

“Okay,” Malia nudges him impatiently with a socked toe.  “And what’s there?”

Peter straightens, absently reaching over to run a grateful hand through Stiles’ hair.  It might be just his imagination but he could swear Stiles leans into his palm for a moment.

“The First vampires,” Peter announces.

“ _Vampires?_ ”  Malia yelps.  “Vampires are _real?_ ”

Peter gives her an unimpressed look.  “You’re a werecoyote who’s faced everything from magical foxes to chimeras.  The existence of vampires should not be that much of a shock.  And if anyone can give the fae a run for their money, it’s the Firsts.”

He rises to his feet.  “Pack our bags, sweetheart, we’re going to Italy.  Let’s hope the government isn’t about to ground the planes though.  I’d hate to have to resort to threatening innocent pilots so soon.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> **Please leave a review on your way out.**
> 
> **(Now Imma gonna go work on my cat!Stiles fic a bit.)**


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